NEWS

Tradition, honor, prestige. That’s just a few of the things that come to mind amidst facilities even amongst the Havard Athletics’ campus. And that’s a half mile from the actual ivy covered lattices Harvard Yard and the proper campus has to offer. It’s something Boston, and New England as a whole, has embedded among its very identity, and it’s an identity each of their sports teams equally reflects. And if Major League Rugby’s newest expansion team has anything to say about it, it’s something the New England Free Jacks hope to identify with as well.

Boston and the New England region got the first real introduction to professional rugby and the Free Jacks over the last month thanks to the recently concluded Cara Cup. A monstrous effort among just their first exhibition season, the New England Free Jacks went global in their step onto the growing domestic stage of rugby, welcoming the academy teams from the prestigious Irish provincial teams, Connacht, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster.

Harvard’s Mignone Field played host to the latest and final match, that being a tilt between the Jacks and Leinster A. And while the score was a painstaking 12-55 defeat at the hands of the Irish, an institution that currently holds double European titles in the PRO14 and European Rugby’s Champions Cup, it was a grand proclamation for a team that was nothing more than a thought merely a year ago.